Verb Inflection Research Articles

The L3 acquisition of English tense-aspect system by Uygur speakers with L2 Mandarin Chinese

This paper examines the role of Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) and linguistic typological similarity in the L3 acquisition of English tense and aspect among Uygur speakers with L2 Mandarin Chinese (Chinese hereafter). LAH asserts that the emerging verbal inflections at the early stage of language acquisition primarily function as markers of the lexical aspect and thus predicts universality for acquisition of tense and aspect. However, with an assumption of language transfer, the typological closer relationship of Uygur with English in terms of the tense and aspect system was expected to trigger L1 transfer in L3 acquisition. The study analyzed the English tense and aspect forms used by the participants (N = 25) for verbs of four distinct lexical aspects (50 target items) in contexts of past. The result shows that the lexical aspect influences the appropriate use of past tense—past tense marker aligned with telic predicates (achievements and accomplishments), -ing with activities (for inappropriate uses), and nonpast with states (for inappropriate uses), and the influence is observed at each proficiency level. The results show little evidence for language transfer in the acquisition of the English past tense, either from L1 Uygur or L2 Chinese; instead, the data suggest that L3 acquisition of tense and aspect is more subject to acquisitional universality (LAH).

The Personal Pronouns of The Mehri Language as Spoken in Saudi Arabia

Mehri is one of six Modern South Arabian languages spoken in southern Arabia. These languages have been noted for their retention of Semitic phonological and grammatical features that have disappeared from other Semitic languages. Mehri is spoken in Oman, Yemen, in parts of southern and eastern Saudi Arabia, and in some of Gulf States. Mehri is classified by UNESCO as “definitely endangered”. Previous studies of Omani and Yemeni Mehri exist, but there have been no studies on Mehri that are used in Saudi Arabia. Morphologically, the dialect groups of Mehri differ in that eastern Yemeni Mehri, also known as Mahriyōt, distinguishes gender in the second person singular independent pronouns, whereas Omani Mehri, Mehreyyet, and western Yemeni Mehri do not. However, Mahriyōt and Mehreyyet differ from western Yemeni Mehri in that they exhibit dual pronouns and dual verb inflections. This study examines number/gender marking in the dependent and independent pronouns of the Mehri spoken in Dammam in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia. Twelve hours of recordings were made during interviewing eleven Mehri speakers (seven males and 4 females) who are living in Dammam. Some of the informants were born in Dammam and others had moved there in different years.

Deconstructing the verbal STAMP system of Ebira

This paper investigates linear and non-linear morphology in verbal inflection in Ebira, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria. The non-linear morphology does not target the root, but rather occurs within pre-verbal auxiliary-like satellite units called a STAMP (Anderson 2011, 2015, 2016), a mnemonic for subject agreement, tense, aspect, mood, and polarity. This paper deconstructs Ebira STAMPs and identifies individual sub-STAMP morphs based on the extensive description in Adive (1989) and Scholz (1976). The individual inflectional categories for subject agreement (1S, 2, 3S, 1P, 3P), TAM (HABITUAL, COMPLETIVE, SUBJUNCTIVE, CONTINUOUS, and PERFECT), polarity (NEGATIVE), and clause-level meanings (INTERROGATIVE, 'IF', and 'WHEN') are decomposed (in part) as non-linear floating tones, floating moras, unassociated segments, and underspecified segments. While Anderson characterizes STAMPs as fused portmanteaux found widely in West and Central Africa (the Macro-Sudan Belt), we hold that 'STAMP' as a typological category may be too crude to assess areal typology. Instead we propose to investigate areality based on whether STAMP categories form a constituent before and to the exclusion of the verb root (requiring arguments independent of transcription practices). In concluding this paper, we ask why non-linear morphology such as grammatical tone does not target the root, and tie this to the pronounced functional load of lexical tone on roots in Ebira.

Vilka faktorer predicerar behärskningen av svenskans preteritumböjning? Om finska gymnasieelevers inlärning av femton vardagliga verb

In this study, we examine how Finnish upper secondary students learning Swedish as a second language inflect Swedish verbs in the past tense. We analyze the answers by 351 students to an online quiz regarding the inflection of 15 common verbs using mixed effects logistic regression modeling. Our results indicate that the correctness of the answers in the verb inflection task can be predicted based on a combination of linguistic and extralinguistic variables. Specifically, with respect to linguistic variables, verb frequency and vowel shift (ablaut) are significant predictors of the correctness of the answers, whereas the traditional distinction between strong and weak verbs is not. With respect to extralinguistic variables, the correctness of the answers is significantly predicted by the students’ gender, age/exposure and level of motivation. Furthermore, we demonstrate through error analysis that, initially, many students follow the same pattern for past tense formation; the verbs’ infinitive form is interpreted as their stem and the past tense suffix -de is overgeneralized to most verbs. On a methodological level, we argue that multivariate analyses allow for a more detailed description of the acquisition order of language structures than what has been achieved by less sophisticated quantitative analyses in prior research, and we encourage other scholars to build on our work by expanding it both in terms of the number of verbs as well as the number of predictor variables.

Understanding same subject-verb agreement differently: ERP evidence for flexibility in processing representations involved in French subject-verb agreement

In an ever-changing environment such as a situation with a variety of linguistic information, individuals have to adapt by selecting the most relevant and appropriate information. In event-related potential studies that manipulated the syntactic agreement between a subject and a verb, it was shown that morphosyntactic features (e.g., number or person feature) are used to compute syntactic dependencies. Furthermore, statistical language information seemed to play a role in the production of subject-verb agreement. We thus investigated flexibility in the processing of morphosyntactic features and co-occurrence frequency between a subject and its verbal inflection. Pronoun primes and verbal targets were presented auditorily and the flexibility of the representations in French subject-verb agreement was studied by manipulating the task to be performed on the target. In Experiment 1, the task was a lexical decision task to induce the use of co-occurrence frequency between a subject and its verbal inflection; in Experiment 2, the task was a grammatical categorization task to amplify the use of morphosyntactic features. Results showed that statistical information affected the processing of the verb earlier than the use of morphosyntactic features, whose violation produced the classic biphasic reaction with negativity followed by positivity. Our findings suggest that there is flexibility in the use of both statistical and abstract morphosyntactic feature representations, although the flexibility of the use of features depends more on task strategies.

Review Essay: The Sicilian World of Gaetano Cipolla

Review Essay: The Sicilian World of Gaetano Cipolla

Language simplification in endangered languages?

Abstract The present paper examines a hypothetical correlation between language endangerment and the simplification of nominal and verbal inflections. After contrasting the complexities exhibited by two endangered languages (Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl and Wymysorys) with the complexities of their non-endangered predecessors (Older Nahuatl and Middle High German, respectively), the authors conclude that the endangerment-simplification entanglement cannot be demonstrated. First, although Wymysorys (a more endangered code) is slightly more simplified than Nahuatl (a less endangered code) as far as the nominal domain is concerned, this relationship is reversed in the verbal domain. Second, simplifying tendencies are not radical, with a number of innovative complexifying processes being also present. Third, when attested, simplification constitutes part of a “natural” language evolution rather than a process resulting from the endangerment.

Swahili verbs and the value of abstractive accounts for agglutinating inflection

Within “word-based”, “paradigm-based” or “abstractive” models of inflectional systems ( Blevins 2006 , 2016 ), only full inflected wordforms are considered primitives; subword strings are treated not as distinct entities, but as abstract generalisations inferred by speakers across multiple inflected forms. These models stand in contrast to “constructive” approaches, which proceed from individual, distinct subword units to full words.An argument consistently adduced in favour of abstractive approaches is that they afford a descriptive advantage regarding “fusional” systems characterised by pervasive non-canonical exponence, such as cumulative exponence, extended exponence, and morphomic structure ( Stump 2016 : 17–30). Via an exploration of inflectional phenomena including non-canonical exponence and arbitrary distributional regularities in the verb inflection of standard Swahili, a language usually described as exemplifying “agglutinating” inflection and amenable to constructive, morpheme-based, analyses, this paper will argue that abstractive systems are equally applicable to “agglutinating” inflection, offering greater empirical plausibility and in some cases descriptive advantage.

Verb Inflection in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Analysis Study

Inflection, the change of word form to mark grammatical distinctions, occurs in a variety of grammatical classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. The purpose of the present paper is to describe the verb inflectional morphology in English and Arabic and to conduct a contrastive analysis of both of them. The research question which is put forth is: how do the verb inflectional morphology in English and Arabic differ from/resemble each other? To answer this question, a systematic descriptive comparative study is carried out with a unique focus on the verb inflectional categories. Eventually, it was found that the Arabic verb inflectional morphology is richer and varied from that of the English. Such a study has implications in fields like foreign language teaching/learning, translation, electronic dictionaries, natural language processing, and the like.

The Use of Inflection Morphology of Tense and Agreement in English Among Chinese Second Language Learners in College

This study examines how Chinese learners of English use four English verb inflectional morphological changes, namely the third person singular -s, the past tense -ed, the copula be and the auxiliary be. Unlike English, subject-predicate agreement and tense marking tense markers are not present in Chinese. Therefore, this difference between the two languages can cause difficulties in second language learning. To explore English language learners' use of verb inflection changes, this study investigated the spontaneous production data of four Chinese college students in online classes. The results show that the four Chinese undergraduates had the highest error rate in the inflection change of the third-person singular verb, slightly higher than the inflection change of the past tense of the verb. That indicates the correct rate of verb inflection change of past tense is slightly higher than that of agreement. Moreover, the copula be and the auxiliary he is rarely used by learners. This has implications for English teaching activities, and Chinese university English teachers can adapt their teaching to these situations by focusing more on students' use of inflexion changes in production tasks.

Epicentral effects on ‐ed/‐t inflectional variation in Australasian Englishes 1850–2020

AbstractThis research examines the possibility of epicentral influence of AusE on NZE, focusing on morphosyntactic variation over 170 years in verb inflections (‐ed/‐t) for the past tense/participles of a set of 12 verbs including burn, learn, spell, spoil. To obtain a diachronic perspective on them in Australasian Englishes we use historical data from 19th‐ and 20th‐century corpora, and 21st‐century data from the NOW corpus of online news. Most verbs show increasing use of ‐t forms in AusE from the 19th to 20th century, and an increase in NZE in the later 20th century, which could be construed as epicentral influence from west to east. But in 21st‐century data from NOW, the ‐ed/‐t balance shifts to ‐ed in both Australasian varieties for eight out of 12 verbs. The fact that ‐t usage on some remains higher in contemporary NZE than AusE suggests a kind of epicentral lag.

Testing the Representational Deficit Hypothesis: From the Aspect of Chinese Learners' Acquisition of Affixation '-s' for Third Person Singular Verbs and Plural Nouns.

The persistent difficulty in making verbal inflections is commonly recognized for second language learners, especially for Chinese-speaking students. Researchers put forward different hypotheses to explain the problems in acquiring inflectional morphology. Among them, the representational deficit hypothesis deficit (RDH), advocated by Hawkins and Liszka, indicates that adult learners will fail to make inflectional morphology to interpret the corresponding syntactic feature if there is no counterpart system in their native language. In English, affix morpheme ‘-s’ marks either third person singular (3SG) in the present tense or regular plural nouns. In contrast, Chinese is a language which lacks 3SG markings but presents the morpheme ‘men’ to reflect a plural feature for nouns with a human property. To test the applicability of the RDH in the domain of affix ‘-s’ for English learners of Chinese, the present study observed the morphological inflections of the third person singular and plural ‘-s’ in 33 Chinese EFL learners’ written and spoken production tasks. The results show that the participants distinguished between the inflectional morphology in regular plural and 3SG thematic verb markings, which was compatible with the RDH. Additionally, other phenomena related to 3SG and plural morphological inflections provided strands of evidence for the RDH, for instance, L2 exposure age, a prominent overuse of plural ‘-s’, and exceptional cases for more 3SG ‘-s’ markings in the written data. Except for the account of morphosyntactic processes in the RDH, other factors, such as input frequency, difficulty of paradigm uniformity, and acquisition order, were referred to as the way that the L2 learners’ acquisition of the morphological inflections was affected.

Type frequency is not the only factor that determines productivity, so the Tolerance Principle is not enough

Abstract Inflection classes that have many members often gain members from classes that have fewer. While this tendency is often pointed out in diachronic linguistics, the American psycholinguist Charles Yang (2016) goes further. He claims this to be always the case, so that minority classes cannot be productive at the expense of majority classes, and that productivity actually can be predicted. By this view, productivity is a direct function of type frequency; there are no other factors determining whether a pattern is productive. The claim of this paper is that type frequency is not the only factor determining productivity, and that while Yang’s approach, the ›Tolerance Principle‹, is interesting, it cannot be upheld in its present form. The paper presents an example of suppletion spreading in Germanic, and it presents examples of minority patterns spreading in North Germanic. Parallels outside of Germanic are pointed out. Also, it is argued that Yang’s (2016) analysis of English verb inflection and German noun inflection is insufficient, so these important case-studies, presented in favour of the Tolerance Principle, do not support it. In general, the paper emphasises the importance of ›local generalisations‹ and of seeing language as a ›system‹ of low-level regularities, not all-encompassing rules. While type frequency certainly seems important for productivity, inflectional morphology is a complex matter; productivity is also influenced by various factors of a more structural nature.

Investigation of Acquisition of Oromo Inflectional Morphology in Typically Developing Children

This research is aimed at investigating patterns of acquisition of Oromo inflectional morphology in typically developing children. The study specifically tries to look into he acquisition of some verbal inflections (tense and aspect) and nominal inflections (number and case). Although linguistic descriptions on various aspects of the Oromo language have extensively been done, there were no research available on the child language acquisition in Oromo in general and inflectional morphology acquisition in particular. The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional research design. Data were collected from thirty children age range 3;0-7;11 years. The study employed primarily elicited production through picture naming method. The speech samples were transcribed first Oromo script and then phonetically transcribed using the IPA symbols. The results showed that some morphological processes attested in children’s productions. In this process, the children employed substitution, and overextension strategy in naming the pictures. In addition, majority of the children omitted noun inflectional morphemes, even at the age 6 through 7. Furthermore, the omission of some inflectional morphemes on the locative case and progressive aspect morpheme were observed, but the lexical morphemes are retained for the latter two items. As to the two past and future tenses, almost all participants performed well. This implies the children acquired these tenses even before the age of 3;3. Evaluating the children’s performance based on sex at the same age, the study revealed an insignificant difference among both sexes.

Polar interrogatives in Lɛtɛ Discourse

The use of special intonation patterns, interrogative particles, the addition of tags, disjunctive structures, a change in the order of constituents, and particularly verbal inflection are among strategies for forming polar questions. This paper describes the use of a special intonation pattern, the use of interrogative tags in tandem with a special intonation pattern, and the use of question particles in conjunction with a special intonation pattern to form polar questions in Lɛtɛ. The paper further discusses social norms governing the use of polar interrogatives in Lɛtɛ discourse. Lɛtɛ is a less-studied South-Guan language of the Kwa family of Ghana. Data for this study form part of a larger database collected in the speech community – Larteh. Praat was used to analyse the pitch patterns of the polar questions informants produced. The paper demonstrates that Lɛtɛ polar interrogatives are marked by a sharp falling intonation and not a rising intonation as claimed in prior studies.

The change in the grammatical category of the copula in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic

AbstractNorth-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA), which is a subgroup of dialects of vernacular Neo-Aramaic, exhibits considerable internal diversity. In this paper, I describe the diversity that exists in the form of the copula in this subgroup. The paradigms of the copula in the various dialects exhibit different degrees of convergence with verbal inflection. There is an areal progression in verbalization from the western periphery to the eastern periphery. The incipient verbalization of the copula can be correlated with semantic properties of the subject and the clause that would be expected typologically to be most compatible with verbal predicates. Close correlations, however, can be identified with the distribution of pronominal and verbal inflections of copulas in the languages with which the NENA dialects have been in contact in the region. It is likely, therefore, that the realization of the internal potential verbalization of the NENA copula was induced by language contact.

Note su infiniti flessi in chianino: un approccio cartografico

In this article, we investigate a morpho-syntactic phenomenon in Chianino similar to the inflected infinitive discussed for Romance. Chianino is an Italo-Romance variety spoken in the southeast of the province of Siena. The analysed structures involve pairs of inflected verbs merged together. The candidates for the higher verb of the pair are (i) the root of the modaldové‘must’ and (ii) the subjunctive form ofavé‘to have’. The second element of the pair can only be a non-suppletive inflected infinitive form of the verbèsse‘to be’, as in the cases of the second person singulardev-ess-i‘you must be’ andabbi-ess-i‘you have to be’ (meaning: ‘you should be’). From a pragmatic point of view, the double inflected formsavé+èssecan only have epistemic readings, whiledové+èssecan also have a jussive connotation. After having briefly introduced the variety under investigation, we will discuss observational and introspective data. We will then proceed to a formal analysis. Adopting a cartographic approach, we consider the second element of the pair as a head located in a dedicated functional projection within the syntactic architecture.

Inhibitory control and verb inflection in Italian preschool children.

The study investigates whether Italian verbal inflectional morphology is associated with inhibitory control skills after controlling for receptive vocabulary and verbal working memory. A sample of Italian preschoolers aged 4;0 to 6;0 was assessed using a standardized inhibitory control task tapping two different inhibitory skills (response inhibition and interference suppression), and a morphological task requiring simple and complex inflections of verbs. The hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that working memory and the interference suppression scores were significantly associated with complex inflections but not with simple inflections of the verbs.

A descriptive study of Pahari verb morphology

This work is an attempt to present a descriptive analysis of the morphosyntactic properties of Pahari verbs. The study identifies that the verbal forms in Pahari are regular and inflect for tense, mood, aspect, gender, and number. Majority of the verb roots in Pahari are intransitive. Transitive verbs in Pahari are formed from the Intransitive verb root through vowel modification and affixation. Causative verbs in Pahari can be derived through vowel modification and suffixation. Indirect causatives formation is a two-step process. First, the direct causatives are formed from the intransitive verbal root and then the indirect causative verbs are formed from these direct causative verbal roots simply by adding the suffix /a:/. Suffixation is the most common process for the derivation of direct causatives. The infinitive suffix /na/ is added to a verb root to form infinitives in Pahari. Furthermore, Pahari verb morphology indicates the use of three participles: perfective, imperfective and conjunctive. These participles function either as adverbs or adjectives. Pahari Double verbs are formed by combining an inflected verb with a non-inflected verb while conjunct verbs consist of two words: an inflected verb with another word-either a noun or an adjective.

A PFM approach to the verb inflection system of Georgian dialects: example of Gurian

The verb inflection system of Kartvelian languages is characterized by the interaction of morphosyntactic features, morphosemantic features and inflection-class traits. Thus, an incremental and morpheme-based approach might fail to seize the multilevel interactions as well as the systemic complexity within Kartvelian verb inflection. However, Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM, Stump 2016) could provide a realizational and paradigm-based approach to verb inflection. Recently, linguists have adopted PFM model in the analyses of different Kartvelian languages and have obtained plausible results (Makharoblidze & Léonard 2020; Tran Ngoc 2020; She 2021). By applying PFM analysis model in Gurian verb inflection, we demonstrate the compatibility of the realizational and paradigm-based approach with traditional templatic analyses. At the same time, we also show that PFM model, by highlighting the paradigmatic dimension of verb inflection, could describe the systemic complexity in a parsimonious way.